“I begged myself by the landlord to paint up my kitchen, but he wouldn’t listen to me. So I seen that if I ever hoped to fix up my house, I’d have to spend out my own money. And I began to save a penny to a penny to have for the paint. And when I seen the painters, I always stopped them to ask where and how to buy it so that it should come out the cheapest. By day and by night it burned in me the picture--my kitchen shining all white like yours, till I couldn’t rest till I done it.” With all her breeding, with all the restraint of her Anglo-Saxon forbears, Mrs. Preston was strangely shaken by Hanneh Hayyeh’s consuming passion for beauty. She looked deep into the eyes of the Russian Jewess as if drinking in the secret of their hidden glow. “I am eager to see that wonderful kitchen of yours,” she said, as Hanneh Hayyeh bade her good-bye. Hanneh Hayyeh walked home, her thoughts in a whirl with the glad anticipation of Mrs. Preston’s promised visit. She wondered how she might share the joy of Mrs. Preston’s presence with the butcher and all the neighbors. “I’ll bake up a shtrudel cake,” she thought to herself. “They will all want to come to get a taste of the cake and then they’ll give a look on Mrs. Preston.” Thus smiling and talking to herself she went about her work. As she bent over the wash-tub rubbing the clothes, she visualized the hot, steaming shtrudel just out of the oven and the exclamations of pleasure as Mrs. Preston and the neighbors tasted it. All at once there was a knock at the door. Wiping her soapy hands on the corner of her apron, she hastened to open it. “Oi! Mr. Landlord! Come only inside,” she urged. “I got the rent for you, but I want you to give a look around how I shined up my flat.” The Prince Albert that bound the protruding stomach of Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt was no tighter than the skin that encased the smooth-shaven face. His mouth was tight. Even the small, popping eyes held a tight gleam. “I got no time. The minutes is money,” he said, extending a claw-like hand for the rent. “But I only want you for a half a minute.” And Hanneh Hayyeh dragged the owner of her palace across the threshold. “Nu? Ain’t I a good painter? And all this I done while other people were sleeping themselves, after I’d come home from my day’s work.” “Very nice,” condescended Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, with a hasty glance around the room. “You certainly done a good job. But I got to go. Here’s your receipt.” And the fingers that seized Hanneh Hayyeh’s rent-money seemed like pincers for grasping molars. Two weeks later Jake Safransky and his wife Hanneh Hayyeh sat eating their dinner, when the janitor came in with a note. “From the landlord,” he said, handing it to Hanneh Hayyeh, and walked out.